How Heavy are These Words?
by menz815
Summary: Olivia looks for Peter after he finds out about his past. Spoilers up to 2x10, Grey Matters. P/O


A/N: Title is from the song Elephant in the Room by Richard Walters. I definitely recommend checking it out. This comes to you partially unbeta'ed because well, I was just too excited and wanted to post it, lol.

Disclaimer: Don't own Fringe or the characters.

* * *

This should have been the first place you had looked, you thought, as you sat in the car watching his hunched over frame, his black jacket fitting amongst the silent field of graves. The sun was just peeking over the horizon, the world bathed in hues of pink and orange, and the grass gave off the faint smoke of dew that often graced these places in the early morning. It was a haunting image; a man attending his own personal funeral in the first breath of a new day.

You'd been searching for him since the night before. You hadn't been there when he'd received the news. You came to the lab to find a disoriented Walter and an Astrid who seemed too overwhelmed to take care of him. It was like that first day you met him; he was incoherent, lost, mumbling softly under his breath. A broken man once again. You looked to Astrid. Her eyes met yours across the room. One look to let you know that your world was falling apart. And then she told you, and you knew that it wasn't your world that was gone. It was his.

You went to every bar in town. And then it occurred to you that there was only one place where he would be able to feel like he belonged. After all this was not his world. And the little boy in that grave was the only person who could truly understand that.

Which was why you were still in the car. It wasn't that you didn't want to be there for him. In the end, it didn't matter to you what world he was from. He was still Peter, still _your_ Peter. But there was nothing you could say or do to make it better for him. There was nothing you could say or do to make him stay.

But you had to try.

You walked up to him slowly. You knew he saw you; his shoulders grew a bit more rigid as you approached. But he didn't look up. You wondered if he would ever let you in. There was still so much to him that you didn't know. You sat down beside him in front of the grave marked "Peter Bishop" and you couldn't help but think that even if he wasn't in the ground beneath your feet, you had already lost him.

His eyes were a bit bloodshot, exhaustion palpable in his features. The bags under his eyes stuck out prominently in the dawning sunlight. You noted the empty bottle of whiskey at his feet, but knew he could never drink enough to forget. The memories, the dreams, had been buried for so long, but now that they had surfaced, their stench open to the spring Boston air, there was no taking it back.

His hand pulled something from his pocket, a coin marred by age and grime. He placed it on the top of his hand and bounced it across his knuckles. You watched it go back and forth, back and forth, mesmerized by its fluid movement. Silence filled the space between you, but it was comfortable. That had always been the case between you two. You weren't one for people, and he really wasn't either, but with him things were different. You were thankful that even now you at least had that. Each pass of the coin across his hand seemed to bring you one second closer to the end.

You had to say something.

Your voice seemed jarring in the quiet of this dewy morning, an intrusion in this dream world that you had tried to create for just a moment.

"I can't make you stay…."

He shifted by your side, but you couldn't look at him, not yet.

"…but I want you to." Your voice shook with your words. You weren't one to lose control, but he brought out the worst in you.

You saw him turn his head then out of the corner of your eye. You dared to look. It was that penetrating gaze again, the one that made you feel like he wasn't just looking at you. He was looking _in_ you and trying to see what lied there. It was something so intimate that sometimes it scared you, but today, for the first time, you didn't look away.

You felt him move closer (your body hummed to his proximity) before you realized what was about to happen. He wasn't nearly as drunk as you would have initially thought which made this all the more frightening, but you knew you wouldn't pull away. You couldn't.

His lips met yours softly, so gently, it was almost achingly sweet. Torture because of its slowness. There wasn't tentativeness there, which meant he was uninhabited enough to cross the boundary, and yet, he was still in control enough to realize how difficult this was for you. When you didn't stop, he grew bolder, placing his free hand in your hair, deepening the kiss. It almost hurt with how good it felt to have him. It hurt to know he could be gone tomorrow. But this didn't really taste like goodbye.

When his lips slowly pulled away, you felt a single tear fall down your cheek.

"I'm sorry." He said, shaking his hand in the small space between you. "I shouldn't have done that."

But then he looked at you. You knew he didn't mean it.

"Actually…" he laughed slightly, "I'm not sorry. I've wanted to do that for a long time." And you knew that was true.

You willed yourself to speak. "I'm not sorry either." You gave him a small smile; you looked at him and prayed he wouldn't break your heart.

He lifted his eyes to meet yours, surprise evident on his face, but you knew it was what he wanted to hear, what he _needed_ to hear.

"I told you you weren't in this alone Olivia and I meant it." He placed his hand on your cheek, his eyes never once leaving yours, and you wondered why you had ever doubted.

You slipped back into your comfortable silence, watching the sun slowly rise before you. Two people from two different worlds simply trying to exist in one singular moment.

You sat in front of a grave marked "Peter", and yet, he was still by your side.

* * *

Please review even if you don't have an account! They're what keep me writing. :D


End file.
